7DRL Announcement

I haven't used this blog in a long time and I find less and less time to do so. But I really want to have some public outlet for my ideas, I am going to start it again with something that will hopefully be fun… I'm going to take part in the 7 Day Rogue-like challenge.

This will not be my first attempt at something like this. In the past I have tried to take part in a game jam, but at the time I just didn't have the time. I'm not sure that I have more time this year, but the circumstances are different so I'm hoping that the outcome will be different as well. I have the opportunity to work on game development (for actual money) with a friend of mine and, while I'm not sure I want to be a professional game developer like he does, I want to support him in his endeavor.

I will use the 7 day rogue-like challenge to cut my teeth a bit in making games using more modern tools. In the past I have prototyped games using home made or half baked game "engines". This time I will be using an established game engine, Godot. This will mean I will need to adapt to their way of thinking in order to get things done, but it also means that I get the benefit of their architecture and design and I get to repurpose a lot of content to make this go faster. I'm hoping that after this experience, I will have a better understanding of what goes into making games on these game engine/IDE things.

I chose Godot because it is Free Software that runs well on GNU/Linux. It has plenty of warts and there are very capable proprietary competitors out there that run on GNU/Linux (mostly), but I'm going to learn Godot first and I'll learn those later.

So, without further ado, here is the announcement:

My entry into the 7 day rogue like will be a real-time dungeon crawler. It will be an action game where you attempt to descend into the depths of a dungeon to reach a final boss and defeat him/her. The main mechanic that I hope is somewhat interesting is that each floor of the dungeon will have a timer that starts the instant you get there. At some random amount of time after you reach a floor, gates will open and unleash a mobs of monsters to kill you. The goal here is to spend enough time on each floor to find the powerups, but get out of the floor before the mobs of monsters overpower you.

The vision I have for the game is a cyberpunk, horror setting. This is mostly because I've been playing some Shadowrun and, after finding it deeply unsatisfying, I started to wonder how I would do it better.

The visual style of the game is going to use pixelation to evoke the same kind of imaginative aspects that ascii art can produce (and to hide my lack of artistic prowess). This game will probably look more than a little bit like Teleglitch.

I have a bunch of other thoughts about this game, some of them jotted down, but I haven't put any code or art down yet. I started my attempt on March 5th, 2016 at 22:00 UTC.